A new home: Thai Buddhists celebrate approval of new temple in Raynham

Wednesday

Nov 10, 2010 at 12:01 AMNov 10, 2010 at 10:05 AM

The temple will be fit for a king.

Area Thai Buddhists celebrated the town’s final blessing of their future home last week, smiling for the cameras before a model of the largest sanctuary of its kind outside of Thailand.

The 109,000-square-foot Theravada Buddhist temple and meditation center on South Street East will serve as a religious and cultural center and home to as many as 16 resident monks.

Susan Parkou Weinstein

The temple will be fit for a king.

Area Thai Buddhists celebrated the town’s final blessing of their future home last week, smiling for the cameras before a model of the largest sanctuary of its kind outside of Thailand.

The 109,000-square-foot Theravada Buddhist temple and meditation center on South Street East will serve as a religious and cultural center and home to as many as 16 resident monks.

It will be topped with a 185-foot golden steeple.

“What a magnificent structure,” Zoning Appeals Board Chairman Robert Newton said before his board unanimously approved the spire’s height.

The plan fulfills the long-held dream of Boston-area Thai families to honor their monarch, King Rama IX, Bhumibhol Adulyadej, who was born in Cambridge in 1927.

Project advisor Richard Cook, a retired engineer, said the complex of buildings surrounding a courtyard was consistent with the religion and culture of Thailand.

It’s a “temple for all people but primarily for the Thai people,” he said.

The complex was also designed to compliment the rural land on which it will be built, architects Matt Lewis and Been Wang, of Architectural Resources Cambridge, said.

The five-cabled, white structure will be set well back off the road, Wang said. It will be tiered and slope down toward the Taunton River to reduce its massiveness and appear more elegant.

The temple, or Wat Nawamintararachutis, will be formally landscaped and preserve existing maple trees and stonewalls.

The steeple’s height complies with all federal and state aviation regulations, Wang said.

It was lowered to below the height of most cell towers to avoid having to light it. The steeple is taller but will have less impact than the spire on the Mormon temple in Belmont because it will taper to a point, he said.

The tip, ZBA member Francis McGuirk observed, would “look like a gold star in the sun.”

Board colleague Karl Vrana said he liked the location and slope of the parcel.

The temple community had housed the monks in quarters around the Boston area for several years.

In April 2006, it purchased the 50-acre property in Raynham, moved six monks into a modest New England farmhouse and began raising money. The temple has since bought an abutting parcel.

Despite the scale of the complex, the project has drawn concerns but no opposition from neighbors.

Only a handful attended Planning Board meetings before the site plan was adopted, and police and fire departments approved strict parking, traffic and emergency provisions.

The center will host two major events a year, in the spring and fall, and another nine or 10 celebrations. Some events will draw more than 500 people.

At last week’s appeals board hearing, several area non-Thai supporters were enthused by the green light.

Ken Pitts and Matt Crowley said they take meditation classes at the temple and find them to be tremendous stress relievers.

“It will serve the entire community,” Pitts said.

Mike Souza, a Catholic married to a Thai woman, said he spends almost every day there.

The Theravada Buddhist group of the Mahanikaya sect is registered as a nonprofit organization: the NMR Buddhist Meditation Center.

It is part of a 2,500-year-old tradition that believes letting go of desire and attachment can free a person from suffering. Its followers say it is a religion of wisdom and compassion.

The temple and meditation center will be used for educational and religious purposes, including meditation and chanting services, religious rites, and teaching about Buddhism, Thai culture, and language.